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Thursday, 27 August 2015

You want silliness in this silly season? How about the silliness of denying the fruits of life to several more merely because we would have to put up with just a little less?

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They call it the silly season, the month when ‘nothing happens’ and our newspapers are required to resort to printing all kinds of nonsensic...
Wednesday, 19 August 2015

A week on the German/Dutch border in the back of beyond in Ostfriesland. And I confess to a very, very silly cock-up

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It’s that itch write again and sooner or later one of us is going to succumb. Quite how I can imagine. Either I give in and write, write, wr...
Saturday, 8 August 2015

That itch to write (Part 2): Again about dogs, but also diaries, emotional defecation, the ‘information superhighway’ (what’s that in Chinese?) and why I think dogs should be allowed to roam

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When I started this blog five years and seven months ago it was to be some kind of hybrid between a diary, a commonplace book and what I can...
Friday, 7 August 2015

That itch to write: Today, dogs, two weeks spent in Corfu almost 30 years ago, irate taxi drivers and how it might, I hope, all hang together, including the important revelation that I am not bisexual, despite what I now suspect were the hopes of one young man and one young woman, if possibly not another young woman (but who knows?)

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When is a dog more than a dog? A fair enough question, of course, but don’t expect any grandiosely sentimental bull from me. A dog is always...
Saturday, 1 August 2015

Cruise control? Who needs cruise control? Well, I don’t, but I got it anyway, for several long, boring miles. And arguing the toss with an 80-year-old Irishwoman while lost in France didn’t help much

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I promised more ‘ironies’, but in fact what I am about to retail is not quite ‘an irony’, more a ridiculous situation which had me baffled f...
Friday, 31 July 2015

An irony and there will be more once I get my act together and survive easyjet flight 5020 from Bordeaux to Londres

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If I were not acquainted with irony – and I am, we are good friends of long standing – what has been going on today would have been a good i...
Saturday, 25 July 2015

Who was Alroy Kear? Well, while you’re finding out, let me tell you about my fourth culture vulture visit to south-west France

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Who was Alroy Kear? Well, if I’m not 100pc certain, I’m at least 99.9pc certain that no one knows what they hell I’m on about. But I do, an...
Saturday, 18 July 2015

The day Britain awoke to hear the shocking news that the Queen likes to goose-step of an evening. Or not as the case may be. Meanwhile, sadly not for the first time, I sail a little close to the wind

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In that magic way we hacks have of skittering from topic to topic (and my innate modesty prevents me from excluding myself from that sorry b...
Tuesday, 14 July 2015

Your truth? My truth? At the end of the day truth doesn’t matter when the house is burning down. And will the euro and the EU survive? (Who said ‘who cares’?)

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There are a great many slippery concepts in philosophy, whether your philosophical discoursing is taking place in a university seminar from ...
Monday, 6 July 2015

Thin-skinned or what? I join Taylor Swift in being removed from the Cupertino Christmas card list. As for the euro, what next? It sure ain’t going to end in laughter, a song and a kiss

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Now here’s a rather telling story. Apple (Apple - remember Apple? Apparently before he died Steve Jobs was reputed by many Apple queens to...